brettm-c

Kit, The kings are great over there and Carl is an awesome guy aswell, I hope you had better luck then we did with the weather. Congrats on the king Brett

We fished out of a town called Tairua, it on the east cost of NZ's north island and is an amazingly beautiful place, great scenery and better fish!!! If you want some great fishing over there look up a guy named carl he is a top bloke, writes for all the NZ fishing magazines and runs a company called epic adventures out of Tairua, for the king of a lifetime he is the man to see!!!

Just came back from a week away with couple of mates jigging for kings and tossing SP's around for snapper (or bight red fish!!! WTF!!!!!) anyway had a great trip with many pb's being broken each time the jig went into the water, my best king of the trip went 150cm and 22kg, with heaps of other craking fish caught my mate even jigged up a healthy mako that we released only to have it take the back end of my other mates best king of the trip! Brett

thats hilarious I'll be letting my, mate know what you posted and he just scored a new nick name!!!!!!

headed out to browns yesterday, left the cooks river at 545 arrived at the mountain at 645, only to find that we had been beaten out there by a stack of boats so headed south east a few miles and started our trail we got a hit nearly straight away which didn't hoook up then nothing for an hour or so, had a couple more hits that were both missed one we put down to inexperience on my mates behalf (birds nest city) and the other was put on me for a dodgy knot. we ended up about 8 mile or so SE of browns and at about 1200 decided to head back up to browns and set a new trail, heard plenty of chat on the radio on the way back up even a few raiders but no one seemed to be having a great day so I started thinking the three we missed in the morning where going to be our only shot, found a spot out wider then the 50 or so boats parked on the mountain and got the pillies in the water, again nothing for a couple of hours, so about 3 i decided i would go pretty lite and rigged up a light jig set up I have and used a 60 flourocarbon trace sent it down the trail with a hand full of pilies and I'm on, this time i hooked up sold and the idea of fishing lite isn't looking like a good idea as this fish is headind for the horizon, anyway made some ground on him slowly and thought i had started to win when after about 10 min the 60lb leader pops and i,m swearing at the heavens!!! well we had the fish in the trail now and over the next hour we had 6 more strikes for 4 hook ups with 3 fish landed, we would have 1 more but we scored a double hook up the lines crossed and one went pop!!!!!! all fish where around 40kg except one that we released at the side of the boat would have pushed 60kg at my best guess. At 5 oclock pointed the boat west and started chasing the light home, got back th BAFA at 6 oclock and then the clean up began!!!!! I also want to thank tony from fishfinder tackle who supplied me with all the baits for the day and a few handy tips!!! cheers mate.

mate i was working on my boat today at BAFA and one of the boys came in with an esky full! he said they where out from the light house in about 45m of water

sammy, all those boats where part of the easter fishing classic run at BAFA over the weekend, they where all the top bream pros from shimano, squidgy, evenrude, hains etc it went over three days and was a catch and release comp for bream, flathead and whiting all the fish where kept in a large tank opposite the club, and there were some absolutely cracking fish caught! they released them all monday arvo in the cooks! would have been a great time to throw an SP around. brett team shimano won the comp by the way.

went out wide today, it was pretty lumpy at first but turned into a craker day! scored a few legal dollies on the wide fad drifting pillies, another boat out said they had hooked a marlin on a livie but dropped it before we got there, fish went quite so i went home! brett

went out last weekend scored about 10 dollies all legal all on pllies drifted back 3 other boats all scored a few each as well also tolled to shelf up and down and back only scored a couple stripies great water though brett

Just thought i'd let you guys in on the fishing that i've been doing the last couple of weeks! headed up to darwin on the 11th to visit friends for a week , my mate up there is also a keen fisho and has a 5.6 center console, so we managed to suggest suitable alternatives to the girls and buy ourselves a few days on the water. spent the first day just checking out darwin harbour and throwing a plastics around, great day on the water not alot in the fish department though, a few bat fish and a stone fish on a plastic!! don't know if thats a first but im claiming it! next day we turned down a trip with some of the guys from my mates fishing club to chase jews, and decided to go up the creeks after barra. WRONG CHOICE, we found out later the other boys had bagged out on black jew while we got stuck in a small hole up the creek after the 6m tide that day had run out and had to wait 6 hours untill there was enough water under the boat the navigate back down the river, the tides are very different to down here they rush in and out in an hour or so and then sit high or low for hours! to make it worse after not scoring any barra but watching a local walk down the river cast his bait net once put on a live mullet drop his line next to the snag we had been fishing all day wait 5 then pull a barra off it and walk away, all of our crab pots where also empty. day three we decided to head off shore into the blue water. we headed about 17mile out to a spot where there are a few wrecks around, it looked promising with small schools of mack tuna and plenty of bait so we anchored up and dropped baits, got hit pretty much striaght away with a small GT coming on board my mate scored a bat fish, and it continued on like this for most of the day, landing about 9 GT's, stacks of bat fish, some red snapper, a few emporers and one small cobia! my first but i hope to improve on the size next time though! Next day myself and the wife said good bye and flew to cairns, we drove up to Port Douglas where we were staying and i proceeded to get every fishing broucher i could get my hands on and start making phone calls, all of the bigger boats where either booked out or didin't have enough numbers to go so i started calling the smaller operators as the weather looked good and i was hoping that they would make the trip out to the reef. I ended up speaking to a guy named adam who had a 6m cairns custom craft c/c that he had specialy built with a hamilton jet in it so he could skim over the reef to parts no one else could fish! sounded good! 6am and adam was out the front of my accomadation with the boat hooked up and we were off! the run was a little bumpy or so Adam says ( it would have been considered a great day down here!) but after and hour we arrived the reef, the main goal for the day was to score a big GT with poppers so we started casting around the bombies right away, after only a couple of minutes with no success adam decides that there are no GTs at this spot so we should try some S/P's, first cast a I get bricked into the reef, adams laughs at me and tells me to pretty much lock up the drag otherwise I'd run out of S/P's, so i re-rig tighten the drag on my calcutta and cast again, two twitches and im on after the first heart in mouth surge for the coral i turn his head and land a nice coral trout, we continued with this for about half an hour scoring trout, sweetlip, and spangled emporers on every cast. then adam gets ichy and wants to see some big GT's come on board so we head for a deeper lagoon in the middle of the reef, this place looked fishy but also very trecherous with jagged bombies and fringing reef everywhere, we started our drift and started casting, after a few casts we see a menacing figure shadowing one of the poppers it was what we had been looking for a Gt of about 15 to 20 pound, but after following in the popper a few times he lost interest. As we drifted along we cast to every promising lump of coral along the way we had a few big splashes behind the lures only to have them miss the hooks but then it happened, my self and adrian the other guy on the boat both cast to a likely bombie and started to retrive only to see a pack of massive GT's shouldering each other out of the way to eat our lures, some how they all missed!!! but I cast out again as quickly as I could and watched one turn and run down my popper!! watching this bulldog of a fish charge at my lure and then feel the grunt of the fish as he peeled 50pound braid off a locked drag was pretty awesome and something I have been dreaming of! My self and adrian both caught a few of these fish each weighing in at about 30/35 pounds and adrian landing one that adam estimated near 50 pound was unforgettable!!! in between i would switch over to my light rod and throw around s/p's constanly scoring great fish all day! just to finish it off a few days later I went for a fish in cairns harbour with the missus, and we scored some good sized bream, a few cod, some grunter, and hooked a decent barra but he spat the hooks near the boat! Can't wait to go out and chase some kings in my boat tomorrow!!!!!!!! cheers brett

I have been renamed the pj king by my fishing mates recently! I have caught 7 of these things in the last three trips all around bate and botany bay, all big and all on bream gear, even then a rat king goes twice as hard as one of these guys, it's trully a pain in the backside especially when their stealing your precious livies!!! brett

No the fishing club dosen't have a pump, that was BAFA that i referd to in my original post, thanks any way.

I was hopeing that some one could help me out, I have recently moved from owning a trailer boat to a moored boat, the boat is in the cooks river and can hold 400l of fuel. My problem is that I can't find anywhere close by to fill up! I am a memeber of BAFA and the boys in the club are very knowledgeable but every one I have asked says that they fill up from jerries! I don't like the idea of carting around 2x44's of fuel every time I want to go fishing! Does anyone know where there is a marina to fill up from in the bay, I know of the one at como, but it is a fair way in the wrong direction. Cheers Brett

yeah oz i was looking at how you had yours set up and are thinking of a variation along those lines! probably dual bar mounted on the roof rather then the gunnells! Thanks for the ideas boys, i don't really have a problem with height as the boat is moored and if the theives want to rip them off good luck to them they have a hell of a swim getting to my boat!!! I spent most of last night drawing ideas I'll post a photo when complete!! cheers brett

I don't have a photo as yet but I will get one this weekend ( the boat is moored so i dont have easy access) sammy I am planning on copying a design, but which one?? personal preference i guess! brett

Boys, I need some help designing some new rocket luanchers for the boat, i have a s/s grab rail at the back of the cabin, and i have almost gone blind looking at all the photos of boats on the site to get ideas!! My mate is a top stainless fabricater and will make up what ever I draw up so my options are pretty unlimited! HALF THE PROBLEM!!! any advice on pros and cons that people have found, and photos would be great!!! Cheers brett

mate, I used to run a foil on my 115 merc that i had to help with lift etc, I upgraded the engine to a new 90 yamaha and the exact same thing happend the boat handled like a pig, pulled the boat out of the water took the foil off and all was sweet, pissed me off about drilling the holes as well. brett

don't tell me that weasel, it only makes me more jealous!!! I was really hoping to experience some mind blowing fishing over there. Dosen't matter i'm already checking the prices for lord howe island! brett

we got evacuated from our resort for half a day but there was no wave or anything, the main thing efecting the fish the charter guys said was the water temp pretty low for that time of year over there, 27 degrees. brett

just came back from a week in vanuatu, went out a couple of times one time for a day game fishing and another reef fishing and both times came up pretty short. picked up one 4-5kg dollie for a whole day of trolling but on 80w's it was just winched in . got a couple of small coral trout and a small sweetlip off the bottom, but that was all, it was so bad over there that the resturants were literally taking fish off the menu, there was just nothing anywhere. I know that fishing moves in cycles and there are always bad days but this was unexplainable. headed to coolangatta for a week after that, went out for a bottom bash there it was still slow but did pick up a mixed bag of pearl perch, pig fish and plate sized pinkies, all nice table fish. so not all was lost, as soon as i got home i checked in to see the reports on raider, hoping that the kings were still about, glad to see they are, just got a new sounder so going to give it a run in the harbour tomorrow. tight lines brett

jason I was at clifton when you guys pulled up, we where in the red and white half cab' I couldn't beleive it when you got that king off the other guys anchor rope i thought you were gone for all money, the only thing funnier then your report was wathcing that 6m quinnie anchor up right in front of that cat and then spend the next hour trying to untangle them selves brett

no I had no luck with the downrigger today, we picked them up on a basic running rig, two of them we got on fresh squid strips and the other on a half thawed out mushey pillie! the other boats around had pretty much the same set up, and were using squid as well!! brett

went out this morning at 6 from rose bay tried for a few squid and to my amazement had some luck! got two good squid in moments and then nothing, took the squid that I had and downrigged from north head to middle head for nothing the wind really blew up so headed in to middle harbour downrigged around the mourings for nadda! decided to pull the pin and head home out of the weather. on the trip back to the ramp we noticed one guy hooked up at clifton, and so decided to slow down and have a look he boated a nice king, we then looked over to see the boat next to him hooked up as well and decided that it was to good to pass up, in the next couple of hours we hooked three legal kings and saw the boats around us probably hook a dozen or so kings all up. headed back to the ramp and pulled the boat out just in time to beat a down pour so in all not a bad day despite the weather. brett

Yeah RPL dropshot is right its a catfish! which is to bad because treadfin salmon are great eating!! better than barra!! brett

sounds like a dream day out kelvin! big fish, big smiles and a nice new big boat, good luck on the flatties but with that new noble you've got you should be out chasing the beakies! no doubt come winter the yellow tail stories will be swapped for yellow fin stories cheers brett